"Tulse Hill" is a series of improvisations on a cello with the strings de-tuned to new pitches. This makes different resonances and creates pleasing tone relationships between the open strings.
I first started playing in this way while working with a movement artist Nikki Tomlinson on a piece performed in Spitalfields church in May 2009. The reason I continued to play and make recordings afterwards was for simply for pleasure.
The way of playing is very limited as there are only 4 main pitches to be used (apart from pitches over the bridge), so the improvisation element was more about discovering and following the natural and varying rhythms as they unfolded in each improvisation and doing my best each time to go further with these unfolding rhythms, seeing where they would take me.
As an improviser I am very interested in rhythm, not just as a unifying element between musicians, but also as individual internal musical spaces, that each musician will express completely differently. And for this project I was interested in discovering what my own rhythmic nature might be. Also repetition is often the simple way to continue to develop and give time to what subtle shifts and changes might occur. The practice of these very simple and absorbing open string studies became an enjoyable escape, and a meditation.
To put this recording together I treated them as if they were a meal that I was inviting the listener to devour. A meal needs to have at least two contrasting and complimentary flavours, which enhance each other. So eventually after a few months of disenchantment, the next element entered; sounds, moments of electronics, field recordings and other gathered recordings, including tapping the table, or recording the boiling of rice in a saucepan with a lid, that offered the âotherâ flavours, to set off my low tenor cyclic rambles.
Each element of these recordings is kept as whole and unedited as possible, hoping that they come together simply as complementary elements of sound. I hope that they are clear, complex, trouble-free and out of place.
- Hannah Marshall, 2012
credits
released 11 October 2012
Cello and additions - Hannah Marshall
Recorded by Hannah Marshall 2009 - 2012
Booklet text and images by Hannah Marshall
Booklet design by Richard Sanderson
hannahmarshall.net
